In my teens, I had close IRA friends who “gave their lives” for a United Ireland – for Irish Freedom – in an armed struggle sponsored and led by the Provisional IRA.

Eamon Lafferty – the first Derry IRA volunteer shot dead by the Brits in August 1971.

Jim O’Hagan – the second Derry IRA volunteer shot dead by Paul O’Connor in August 1971.

Ethel Lynch – blown up and killed by a parcel bomb made by a person untrained and yet ordered to make such devices.

In fact, too many IRA volunteer friends to list here…

One thing is for sure – if they could have foreseen the IRA’s ultimate failure – and the IRA leadership’s ultimate betrayal of everything they were promised and lost their lives for – they would have left the IRA and never have risked their lives or taken the lives of others.

What’s more – some of them if they had forseen what McGuinness and Adams later led the IRA into – into the two partitionist parliaments and into the constitutional politics they were brainwashed to oppose and detest – into the Stormont they were sent out to SMASH – into governing Northern Ireland on behalf of the British Government for which the Movement branded the SDLP as Quislings – they would have set out to kill those mis-leaders at that time, such was the brainwashing that any of those outcomes were worse than treason or that any persons reccommending those actions were traitors deserving execution…

I should know – when I published a letter from Wordwood Scrubs prison in February 1978 calling on the IRA to dump the armed struggle and get into democratic politics, one of the actual Birmingham Pub bombers – Mick Murray – tried to militate the IRA prisoners on D Wing of Wormwood Scrubs to kill me in my cell.

The IRA’s campaign – the promise that bombs and killings would force the Brits out and unify Ireland into some kind of unspecified Socialist gloryhole – was a total failure whose divisions still dominate the island today.

Bobby Sands followed the same nihilistic IRA path as my teenage friends and I did – first with guns and later with bombs – ending up in prison cells for long periods of his young life.

He was sentenced in March 1973 to 5 years for armed robberies [£220 taken in total] and weapons offences during which he terrorized civilians – not respecting their Civil Rights to get on with their lives without being subject to terror and threats to their lives at gunpoint – at his guns supplied by the Provisional IRA.

Shortly after his release from prison for that sentence, the Provos’ nihilistic path led him once more to terrorizing civilians with guns and this time four bombs blowing up a furniture store in Dunmurry – near where the “New IRA” car bomb exploded on April 25th.

No respect for the civilian Civil Rights yet again, faced with guns and bombs as they went about their daily lives.

It was for the furniture store attack that Sands once more found himself locked up – still under the mistaken belief that the IRA would continue its “war” for Smashing Stormont, Brits Out and a United Ireland – little knowing that his nihilistic hungerstrike to the death would be the death-knell for the IRA’s sacred “armed struggle” (yesterday’s ‘principle’, today’s ‘tactic’) and for its turn to the constitutional path in the formerly “partitionist parliaments” following in the footsteps of the Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the SDLP.

When Bobby Sands died at the age of 27 years after 66 days on hungerstrike, he had spent a total of 8 years and 7 months of his adult life in prison cells in service of the Provisional IRA that would shortly afterwards seek a deal from the British to end the IRA campaign with some kind of face-saving outcome.

That outcome involved the IRA leadership BETRAYING every single promise made to the youthful IRA volunteers of the 1970s – every one.

It was Brits In.

It was Partitionist Parliaments In.

It was Stormont In.

It was British Government of Northern Ireland In.

It was the Border In until a majority voted otherwise.

It was Dissidents In Maghaberry Prison at the behest of the New Stormont Sinn Fein Ministers…

It was effectively the SDLP In – because Sinn Féin became everything the “Quislings” of the SDLP had been…

So would Bobby Sands – if he could have foreseen the outcome of the PIRA’s “armed struggle” – would Sands have given nearly 9 years of his adult life to being locked up in prison cells and a dirty protest and then 66 days of agonizing hungerstrike for Stormont and Partition and for British Rule continuing at the behest of Sinn Féin’s British Government ministers?

Not a chance in hell…

Is there a single young educated nationalist who would look at this life that ended in total failure – still glorifying the violence of the bomb and gun such as the New IRA continues to glorify – and in the republican movement’s total failure and betrayal of its living and dead IRA volunteers – is there really a majority of nationalists who regard a failed terrorist hungerstriker as a “hero“?

Has John Hume’s peaceful and democratic leadership – offered to the IRA to get it off the hook of its own dead-end armed struggle – not won out in the end by converting IRA Sinn Féin to the constitutional path?

You can only have a “hero” whose life and example are things that – if you were brave enough or able enough – you would wish to follow, to emulate in your own life.

What young person wants to follow Bobby Sands attachment to violence, to bombs, to guns, to prison sentences and to a nihilistic hungerstrike?

If the IRA’s prison hungerstrike was so vitally necessary for IRA prisoners to survive imprisonment in Northern Ireland – if the prisoners’ five demands were so vital that they were worth dying for – why did the scores of IRA prisoners in English prisons – including Big Name leaders like Brian Keenan and Dickie Glenholmes – why did the prisoners in England find no problem whatsoever with wearing prison uniform, with doing some prison work or studies – while drinking buckets of hooch most evenings, while smoking kilograms of cannabis every evening possible in cell parties with their record players, Roberts’ radios, joints of cannabis and Old Holborn, with their hobby materials of leather and wood, oil paints, bookbinding or whatever – why did the scores of IRA prisoners in the English prisons where I spent 10 years – why did they not object to their lot, even after Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan had died?

I never in my 10 years around the top security prisons in England as a Category “A” prisoner found a single IRA prisoner who really wanted a transfer back to Northern Ireland when they surveyed their lot in the English prisons – medical dope on tap from the medical hatches every evening [Mogadon], cannabis for purchase and smoking along with ounces of Old Holborn [paid for by PDF monies sent in], personal record players in their cells with limitless LPs, Roberts radios, tailored clothing to fit in the tailors’ shops in the prisons, bets with the prison ‘bookies’, ample supplies of porn magazines and – for the homosexual prisoners among them [although they were fearful of being found out by their IRA comrades] many opportunities for homosexual liaisons…

I was the only prisoner to maintain a protest for 4 years of solitary confinement for repatriation to Northern Ireland – not least because I had been arrested there.

It was 10 years before I was repatriated to Long Kesh – where I refused to go on the IRA wings of the prison.

So what was it all for, if I could ask Bobby Sands back in time?

For Stormont?

For British Rule by Stormont?

Or Sinn Féin in British Ministerial positions enforcing British Rule in Northern Ireland?

When I recommended democratic politics over armed struggle in my letter to the press in February 1978 I was “blanked” by most of the IRA prisoners for years – until the IRA leadership caught up with my recommendation 20 years later…

Does a majority of nationalists think Man of Violence and Man of Nihihisticl Hungerstrike Bobby Sands – who was betrayed by his IRA leaders – is a HERO in 2026?

I think not, Suzanne.